A Night Out

Last night Pam and I went to the Evanescence concert. Now I need to clarify that I went because Pam really wanted to and she bought the tickets! It was quite a show, one that left me feeling quite old! I just couldn't get into it very much. I guess it's the genre of music, but I don't like the grinding guitar sounds that seem to make most heavy metal songs sound pretty much the same (at least to me!).

There were two opening bands, and the first was totally awful; I mean they were a full on garage band for sure. There was this guy behind us who was WAY to enthusiastic about is all. I said to Pam that he really should have splurged for better seats because up where we were, not too many people were as verbally into things as he was!

Then came the 2nd band, which was called Stonesour. Frankly they sounded a lot like a Metallica-type group to me. For sure a step up musically from the first band, and I found out today in the paper that the lead singer was the lead guy from Slipknot, the psycho looking group that somehow reminds me of the evil guy from the original SAW movie. I know that it's part of the performance and all, but I just was totally turned off by the profanity laced lyrics and rants he went on. Oh well, what can you do. Oh, again, perhaps this is somehow 'normal' at these things, but he kept taking a swig of water bottles and then throwing the rest of the water on the crowd. I was fairly amazing to watch him swing his head around, in the classic 'head-banger' style, but I kept wondering how he could do that without giving himself a vicious headache!!
Now that I've thoroughly demonstrated that I AM old, I'll move on to Evanescence:

Clearly I don't know much about this kind of music, but I thought the sound quality was pretty bad. Or was it just the way the music is supposed to sound? No, it can't be that, because I've heard a number of Evanescence songs on cd and they sounded considerably better on cd (some would argue that all songs sound better on cd b/c of production...maybe true).
What was interesting was that in today's Edmonton Journal, the review of the concert said that the sound was surprisingly good; while the review in the SUN said the exact opposite, that the sound was brutal. Who's right? I don't know. All I do know is that I couldn't understand a lot of what Amy Lee was saying/singing and I needed to read the quotes in the papers today to get most of what she said. (I caught bits and pieces). One thing everybody seems to agree on is that Amy Lee has an amazing voice.

At this point, you may be wondering WHY I went in the first place, given that it doesn't sound like it was a good experience. I liked Pam's perspective: she's got diverse tastes; one month we go to Evanescence and the next we go to the opera or the symphony. So why did I go? I like spending time with my wife, and going with her did make the night a lot of fun. I also go to the ballet with her, and believe me, that's quite a bit tougher for me to get into than Evanescence!!

So there's my evening. Even though it wasn't exactly my favorite musical experience, it was still a lot of fun!